Faculty members of AHS participated in a suicide prevention training on Wednesday Nov. 29 directed by Sonya Fittje. Fittje is the clinical hotline supervisor for BoysTown Iowa and travels to different school districts to “bring education and awareness to suicide prevention.”

Principal Heather McKay said suicide is a growing concern. “Mental health needs have been growing from what I’ve seen as my 8 years as principal. I am terrified, seriously. Anything that deals with the loss of a life of a student is an educator’s worst nightmare,” McKay said. She hopes to have a better understanding and better tools to help others dealing with the issue.

According to Fittje, the training will be in presentation style. Goals for the faculty members during the training are to be able to identify risk and protective factors of a person having thoughts of suicide, warning signs of suicide and how to help a person possibly having these thoughts.

Fittje said she feels strongly about doing the training for the faculty members because they obviously feel that it’s important to learn about mental health and specifically about preventing suicide in AHS. “I feel like that’s very important and a pretty great effort on your staff’s part to want to learn more because they clearly have all of your best interests in mind,” Fittje said about the staff at AHS.

Fortunately, AHS hasn’t had to experience the loss of a student, but there are growing concerns involving mental health issues. Junior Matt Gearheart said he’s glad it hasn’t been a problem here because “it’s a sad deal” and he doesn’t want anything to happen like this at AHS.  Gearheart said he thinks there should be an assembly covering suicide directly once or twice a year. “You never know. That one assembly could save a kid,” Gearhart said.

Senior Nicole Eilts said the faculty training is something that should be required, but is also “a debatable topic.” Eilts said she doesn’t think there’s an issue at AHS, but it would be good to “stop the issue before it happens.” “I think the training would be a good thing to prevent something from happening and to help staff talk to students and recognize if something were wrong,” Eilts said.

Along with other students, sophomore Clayton Jipsen said he believes suicide is a real issue even though it hasn’t happened “close to home.”  Jipsen said it’s a fantastic idea for the staff of AHS to attend the training. “The teachers all have to be willing to do the exercises and bring the things they learn from the training to the halls to AHS,” Jipsen said. To help prevent this kind of issue, Jipsen suggests eating lunch with someone sitting alone, being their friend, and always offering a happy smile to someone when they seem low.